Our bodies have a supply of cells called invariant natural killer Ts (iNKT). If you are old enough to remember The A Team, think of them as microscopic Mr. Ts who battle disease instead of bad guys. But T cells need germs to fight, or they make trouble for a body. If there are too many T cells with too few germs, the T cells can cause inflammation and illness.

Previous research in the 1990s examined a link between the boom in childhood food allergies and too many anti-bacterial soaps and cleansers, a phenomenon dubbed the “hygiene hypothesis.” This new Harvard study seems to support the hypothesis, and may force us all to reconsider the way we think about germs

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